The Gift

My eyes look at the staff on the page, deciphering the notes and clefts and time signatures as naturally as some people read a book. I’ve had a lot of lessons.

My great aunt was not so lucky. Her Victorian grandparents took a whip to her if she frittered away time trying to pick out a song. It didn’t matter. You can’t beat the music out of a soul very easily and by the time I knew her, she played so beautifully I was enchanted. She couldn’t read music, but she could play that piano!

She was my inspiration. I thought she was the most beautiful woman in the world and the most talented too. Looking back I realize that she was also the most loving person I’ve ever known.

A tiny woman, her mother died giving birth to her and they kept her in a cigar box, wrapped in cotton inside an old cook stove; she was never able to have children of her own, so she mothered the world. I don’t think I ever heard a cross word come out of her mouth and I know I must have tried her patience more than a few times.

She was still here when my son was born and she was still the same sweet soul I’m sure she was when my mother was born. The first time he ever slept more than two hours, was in her arms when she came to visit us one day.

So, tonight, as I sat playing Sarah McLachlan’s “Angel” on my old piano, I began by feeling kind of quiet and maybe a little sad, but slowly found myself drifting back to those days long ago. Days when I could not read music, but I could sit on the little footstool in my Grandma’s house listening to my Great Aunt Lela playing the old upright piano in ways that stirred a three year old’s heart.

I wonder if she knew what a gift she was giving me?